Busy

Find the monkey.

Today I wrote a letter to lonely planet, went to the market, haggled for and bought a guitar in semi-French/Arabic, shaved my head (not bald, just short), went to the market again, cooked dinner (chicken soup with rice and parsley...or was it rice and parsley soup with chicken?), and watched a couple episodes of whale wars with the gents.

Saturday we all took the day off and went to Fez for a change of scenery. The medina was beautiful. A maze of chaotic dusty alleyways lined with shops selling everything from exotic spices to cell phones. It's the only place I've ever been where you are in danger of getting run over by a donkey if you don't pay attention. Getting lost is obligatory. The problem, however, is that it's one of the 'main attractions' of Morroco, and so comes with its fair share of hassle from men trying to tell you that you will have a horrible time if you don't hire them. Some of them can be quite aggressive. One of them ordered me not to speak Arabic because 'it sounded terrible'. It was the first thing in Morocco that was almost exactly what I thought it would be, which was for some reason a bit disappointing. As always, I was happy to come home to Azrou, where the biggest hassle is trying to figure out how to get across that I'd like some chicken, but without the bones. No, I'd like to take the bones with me please. For soup. Ok, just give me the chicken then. Cool.

I've heard the Meknes medina, which is only about an hour away, is equally as cool and involves half the hassle, so hopefully that's on the list of upcoming trips.

The guitar is a cheap nylon string guitar, but it has decent action, good intonation, and most importantly a nice, mellow tone. My fingers feel like they're made of spaghetti noodles after two and a half months of not playing, but I'm confident that they'll start to remember how it works in a week or two.

Back to the forest tomorrow. The group has been acting especially strange lately. Some of the males seem to actually disappear for most of the day, and strange monkeys have been dropping in at random intervals to hassle the females. According to Chris and Dave, today they were spread out over half a kilometer (normal group spread is about 100 meters).
We'll see how it goes. They certainly know how to keep things interesting.

Miss and love you guys.


Soundtrack: Phosphorescent - Wolves